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Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2011 10:41:24 -0700 (MST)
From: Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com>
To: Matthias Apitz <guru@unixarea.de>
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Cc: Bruce Cran <bruce@cran.org.uk>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Acer Aspire One D250 disk spin-down problem
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On Sun, 16 Jan 2011, Matthias Apitz wrote:

> El d??a Sunday, January 16, 2011 a las 10:05:39AM +0000, Bruce Cran escribi??:
>
>> On Sun, 16 Jan 2011 08:24:13 +0100
>> Matthias Apitz <guru@unixarea.de> wrote:
>>
>>>     Master:  ad4 <WDC WD2500BEVT-22ZCT0/11.01A11> SATA revision 2.x
>>
>>> As well the BIOS has no visible option for this. I want to disable
>>> this, what could I do?
>>
>> Since it's a WDC disk I guess it's one of the "green" ones. These have
>> a short default timeout after which they park the heads. I think you'd
>> need to run the wdidle3.exe application to disable the internal timer,
>
> Thanks, but wdidle3.exe is no option because the laptop does not know
> any Win* partition anymore :-)

It's actually a DOS application and can even be run from a DOS-formatted 
syslinux memdisk.  Not all WD drives can be adjusted with it.  A 500G 
BEVT drive says it changed, but still seems to have an 8-second timeout.